This is my second time at trying to post this. I’m at my parents’ for Mother’s Day and his computer is rather twitchy.
What I was trying to say is that over the last couple of weeks I’ve been having Kiwi experiences.
Two weeks ago, I saw Crowded House at the Fillmore (Irving Plaza). It was general admission, so I was close enough to see Neil Finn clearly. He invited the PS 22 Chorus, an elementary school group from Staten Island to open the show. He’d apparently seen a video of them singing one of his songs and he liked it so much that he had them come on stage for the show.
They performed three songs, including Private Universe. Then the band came on stage and did the song with them. YouTube has a video of it.
Because YouTube embedding seems to completely throw off the formatting of my site, here is the link, if you’re interested:
It was great. Say what you will, but there is nothing wrong about kids singing. It was a great start to the show.The rest of the show was great as well. I’ve come to like and respect Crowded House over the last year and Neil Finn’s voice is still incredible. They are definitely seasoned veterans on stage, but they also have a bit of a casual approach, ad libbing and playing songs that weren’t on the list. They even invited one of the audience members from the front row up to sing and play with them on one song, a song he apparently performed with them back in August in California.It was a great show.Then, this past week, I went to see Flight of the Conchords. Twice. The New Zealand comedy duo, stars of their own HBO show, winner of the Grammy for best comedy album, Bret and Jemaine, two of my favorite people in the world. Both shows were great and slightly different. On the second night, I helped my brother dispose of his tickets, ending up 8th row center at the Town Theatre. They played almost every song I wanted them to play. With the exception of Leggy Blonde, which I will forgive them for since it’s more a Murray song than anything. I was happy that my seats were better than Susan Sarandon’s and Tim Robbins’ seats, which were about 8 rows behind me.
Both shows were incredible and made me a very happy individual.
Only one way to top this, and that’s a trip to New Zealand. Maybe next year…
P.S. I was in Park Slope yesterday looking at apartments and I saw Mel from the Flight of the Conchords on the street. I had to stop myself from making a noise of excitement.